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Developing leadership skills is something that can be achieved successfully in-house, argues Pam Henderson.
There is much interest in leadership across the cultural sector; there seems to be a broadly accepted view that the effectiveness of an organisation and its ability to achieve its goals are largely determined by the quality of the leadership within it. Accepting this as a general truth, it therefore makes sense for organisations to invest time and money in the development of its leaders, and leading on staff development is a HR responsibility. But what does leadership mean, and how is it different or similar to management? Defining leadership seems to cause as many challenges as defining culture. I think that leadership and management are both about achieving organisational goals by creating the opportunities for people to be more productive. While leaders focus on the big picture, create a vision and challenge the status quo, managers focus more on detail and day-to-day activities. However, both leaders and managers need to be able to inspire and engage staff in order to make them productive.

Context is everything

There is a compelling life mantra, context is everything, and this is never more true than when considering leadership development within your organisation. There are three important considerations to bear in mind before you put any leadership development plans in place. Firstly, you need to think about who your leaders are; secondly, you need to consider what kind of leadership you need; and thirdly, you need to clarify what real value (and therefore time and money) your organisation places on developing people.

Lets start with who you might be developing. Your organisation will have strategic leaders. This wont necessarily just be the number one in your organisation. In larger organisations it will include the senior management team assuming each of them has a direct impact on the strategic direction of your organisation. You might also have middle managers or team leaders for whom leadership plays a part they need to provide their team with a vision, and live the values of your organisation. This is particularly the case for venue-based organisations with a front-of-house function such as museums, galleries, cinemas, theatres and arts centres. There will also be a cohort of people within your organisation who wield personal power, that is to say, that they have an ability to positively influence their colleagues, even though they may not have any formal authority to do this.

To understand what kind of leadership your organisation needs, you are going to have to have a deep understanding of your organisations purpose, vision, strategic direction and emerging challenges otherwise your efforts may be misdirected and of no great use. My last column (see AP issue 147) looked at how to avoid this when planning HR interventions.

The choices you make about leadership development within your organisation will be shaped by the resources you have. For many arts organisations, the responsibility for HR will lie within someones post often the chief executive or equivalent. In larger organisations, this will have been delegated, frequently to the PA of the chief executive. It is likely that there will only be a dedicated HR person in organisations with more than 50 employees, which counts for a small percentage of arts organisations.

The core process

Notwithstanding the basic principle that the decisions you take will be governed by your organisational context (goals, current people and resources), there is a core process that is likely to be present when introducing any kind of in-house leadership development programme.

Step 1: Develop self-awareness. We become self-aware by disclosing things about ourselves, and listening to the feedback of others. If we are not aware that we have shortcomings in our leadership, then how are we going to change? For example, Sheila was the curator of a regional museum who had been sent on loads of communication courses which seemed to have had little impact everyone in the museum found her frustrating because she never listened. As part of the museums leadership programme Sheila took part in a 360 review, where staff gave feedback on their experience of Sheila. I had no idea people found me so difficult to work with, said a rather gutted Sheila. I have to do something about it. Her commitment to improving her communication style was established.

Step 2: Become open to new possibilities and fresh ideas. There is nothing like tunnel vision to foster leadership mediocrity. For leaders to learn, they need to be challenged and stimulated by new experiences. Training can do this to a degree, but it is not as effective as coaching or mentoring, or action learning sets. Job shadowing or job swaps are also great, as is acting up. For example, a small-scale touring company in the south west realised that it was struggling to respond to the shifting demographics in its region. A board member arranged for the artistic director and general manager to shadow senior staff in a touring company in Northern Ireland. This helped them clarify the skills and knowledge they needed to acquire to find a strategic direction for their own organisation. They commented, We have to become more politically astute and build relationships with regional players.

Step 3: Acquire the skills, knowledge and expertise to deliver the goods. Once your leaders have got a greater level of self-awareness, and have become enthusiastic about and can see a relevance to acquiring new skills, then training has the capacity to be worthwhile. Whatever training solutions you decide upon, it is important to consider how the learning will be applied within your organisation. (Again, AP Issue 147 looked at this in more depth.)

Was it good for you?

If you are going to find out whether any of your HR interventions were effective, then clearly you are going to have to find a way to demonstrate an impact. This is feasible if you set some measurable goals at the outset that are based on an understanding of your organisational context. For example, a mid-scale theatre introduced a leadership programme in response to its strategic direction which was to achieve competitive advantage through outstanding customer care. It measured this by the year-on-year increase in repeat bookers.

Pam Henderson is a director of the Henderson Aplin Partnership. She works with cultural organisations to help them further improve the effectiveness of their people.
t: 01223 520293;
e: pam@hapartnership.com